New Fire Station Plan Abandoned

Westmont Village Hall To Be Built Without One

July 12, 2000|By Dion Cassata. Special to the Tribune.

Westmont fire officials on Monday argued that the village is better served by having fewer fire stations. Trustees agreed.

At a special meeting, trustees voted to abandon plans for an ambulance bay in the soon-to-be-built Village Hall, even though thousands of dollars have been spent recently on architectural plans for the facility.

Razed in April, Village Hall had also housed for nearly 50 years Station No. 1, which had been a full-service fire station but for the last 10 years had only been the base for a two-person ambulance unit.

"There's no clear advantage for anybody to have us at Station No. 1," said Deputy Fire Chief James Connolly. Connolly said that since south Westmont ambulance services were moved in mid-February from village hall to Fire Station No. 3, near 60th Street and Cass Avenue, emergency response times have improved to many areas in central Westmont, as well as expected in the south.

He and Fire Chief Frank Trout also argued that having firetrucks and ambulances respond from the same facility results in better coordination among paramedics and firefighters and fewer dispatching problems arising from overlapping calls. He said it also helps foster camaraderie and better supervision.

Trustee James Lenihan said that according to a special census done about three years ago, the village's population of 22,000 is demographically centered around 59th Street and Cass near the rapidly growing south end of Westmont between 59th and 67th Street. Fire Station No. 2 near Cass and Traube Avenues primarily serves the area north of the Burlington Northern/Santa Fe freight and commuter railroad tracks that run through the downtown.

Connolly told board members that although hiring more paramedics and keeping Fire Station No. 1 as an emergency medical services post is a well-intentioned idea, he said it is questionable whether there are enough ambulance calls per day to justify the costs associated with having ambulances in three locations.

The board's decision came just 24 hours before a village committee was to fine tune final design plans for the new $2.9 million Village Hall.

Village Manager Ray Botch estimates that eliminating the two-story ambulance facility, which would have abutted the south side of the Village Hall, will save between $300,000 and $350,000 in construction costs. The planned emergency medical services facility would have housed an ambulance bay, showers, a work area, sleeping quarters, storage space, a reinforced concrete floor and a special exhaust ventilation system.

Despite the savings, trustees acknowledge that they are not pleased that thousands of dollars have been spent over the last six months on architectural work for the ambulance facility.

"The timing of this is really terrible. ... The time to [decide on the issue] was when we were beginning the planning process," said Trustee Wendy Wilson, who added that she originally had embraced the idea of keeping the ambulance facility at Village Hall, but agreed to abrogate the plans after hearing input from fire officials Monday.

Lenihan said the waste of expenditures could have been avoided had the village been more receptive to Fire Department concerns months ago.

Connolly had urged in a January memo that the ambulance bay not be built, arguing that such plans were "wasting a quarter million dollars of the taxpayers' money for a decrease in protection for the overall community."

Village officials said that trustees simply felt that having three instead of two Fire Department facilities would offer better emergency services to the whole community.

Construction on the new village hall, which is near the commuter train station and the recently built Westmont Centre, 1 S. Cass Ave., will begin this fall.

Most village governmental meetings and administrative services are temporarily being held in the Westmont Centre.